Is the GPS a dying gadget?

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Handyman-N-Fam
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Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by Handyman-N-Fam »

According to MainStreet, they won't be around in 10 years. They listed 7 gadgets that will be obsolete by the end of the decade. The GPS was at the top of the list.

Which Tech Gadgets Will Be Phased Out This Decade?

Hindsight may always be 20-20, but you don’t need particularly great foresight to know many of the gadgets on today’s market won’t be around in 2020 given how quickly the tech industry keeps changing. In the first half of the 2000s, retailers were buzzing about the prospects of MP3 players and netbooks, but by the end of the decade, those products had largely been replaced by smartphones and tablets.

As tempting as it may be to imagine otherwise, some of the gadgets you may rely on most right now will likely suffer the same fate and be killed off or made obsolete by the end of this decade. Sure, you may still be able to find these products for sale in certain niche stores, but they will no longer be produced for a mass-market audience.

“You can still find and buy VCRs and there are people still using mainframes from 1992, so it’s not like this stuff disappears forever,” says Stephen Baker, an industry analyst at the NPD Group. Baker notes that the main reason retailers continue to market and sell outdated products is to cater to shoppers who buy them for nostalgia’s sake, but for all intents and purposes the market has left these products in the dust. So which popular products today will join the likes of VCRs, cassette players and transistor radios in the next few years? MainStreet asked five tech analysts to offer their thoughts on the gadgets that will largely be phased out by the end of this decade.

Standalone GPS Systems

The days of spending $200 or more on a standalone GPS device won’t last much longer, analysts say.

“Portable navigation devices like those sold by TomTom and Garmin will probably not be sold in 2020, just because mobile phones will have taken on that function themselves and because GPS systems will be standard equipment in cars,” says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm. As a result, there won’t be much of a need to buy a product whose only function is to tell you directions.

If there is a demand for these GPS systems, it will likely come from a very specific segment of consumers.

“Maybe you could argue there will be a market for guys climbing Mount Everest or long-distance truckers or the military, but for the vast majority of consumers, standalone GPS systems will be irrelevant and redundant,” Baker says.
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Handyman-N-Fam
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by Handyman-N-Fam »

If anyone cares, the other gadgets on the list are:
E-Readers
Feature Phones
Low-End Digital Cameras
DVD Players
Recordable CDs and DVDs
Video Game Consoles
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SuchaNana
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by SuchaNana »

agghhh, how true... it took me a bit of looking, but i recently purchased a vcr player/recorder to dvd -
still trying to finish converting/saving all the home films my pops had put on vcr - some were of his grandparents...
now you tell me the dvd's will be obsolete for my grandkidzzz? what, pray tell, shall i be saving those on instead?

as for the handheld garmin, i'll always be having fun caching with it...
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by allenite »

Handyman-N-Fam wrote:“Portable navigation devices like those sold by TomTom and Garmin will probably not be sold in 2020, just because mobile phones will have taken on that function themselves and because GPS systems will be standard equipment in cars,” says Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester, a market research firm. As a result, there won’t be much of a need to buy a product whose only function is to tell you directions.

If there is a demand for these GPS systems, it will likely come from a very specific segment of consumers.

“Maybe you could argue there will be a market for guys climbing Mount Everest or long-distance truckers or the military, but for the vast majority of consumers, standalone GPS systems will be irrelevant and redundant,” Baker says.
The in-car units really need to address the idea of a map update though. The update disks on these are many times more expensive than a standalone unit. The other question is what will happen to all of these integrated GPS devices when GPS III becomes active. From what I remember from a talk -Tiki- gave, the old devices will not be able to use the newer satellites and reap its benefits among the largest is increased reception in highly urban areas. This system is set to start launching in 2014 likely taking several years to bring up the constellation. After it goes up and is live, the current system will likely start to go offline with time.

I think they may become less, but I am not sure they will go away within the decade.
SuchaNana wrote:agghhh, how true... it took me a bit of looking, but i recently purchased a vcr player/recorder to dvd -
still trying to finish converting/saving all the home films my pops had put on vcr - some were of his grandparents...
now you tell me the dvd's will be obsolete for my grandkidzzz? what, pray tell, shall i be saving those on instead?
The good news with optical media like CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, is that they have continued to be backwards compatible as the format progresses. From a DVD they can relatively easily be converted and captured to a computer.



On the other hand, tape-drive backup units for computers and the Winchester spinning-disk hard drives have been on these lists for a couple of decades, but they continue to survive.
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by cheechgang »

I have a #2 pencil that still works.
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by GoodDog »

cheechgang wrote:I have a #2 pencil that still works.

That's the upgrade. I still use a #1, and I'm considering upgrading to a #1.1
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by GrizzFlyer »

Ford is ceasing installation of DVD players in their vehicles, the 2012 Focus is the first to delete it. Other model lines will follow in a year or two. Almost all of them have an audio-in port and a USB port that integrates with the vehicle consumer electronics.

About 2-3 years ago some of us were talking at a NWOGEO meeting about the new capabilities of cellular phones. I found it amazing that your small phone would also be a GPS unit, PDA, media recorder/player, camera (still and HD video), wireless access point, and more, all wrapped up in one small package. The timeline then we guessed at 5 years. It's here now, has been for a year (or more). Things are moving fast.

Its been only recently that vehicle operating parameters can be easily monitored by the user. Plug a $25 bluetooth device into the OBD2 port that all vehicles since 1996 have, download a $5 app to your smartphone, and you can see everything you ever wanted to know about your car and whats it doing. I wanted to monitor the turbo boost on my Ford F150, piece of cake. Until this became available, it took a $500-600 gadget to do it.

Maybe I can get rid of the 8 track player now.
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roadkill103
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Re: Is the GPS a dying gadget?

Post by roadkill103 »

You guys have pencils!!!
I'm still using hammer chisel
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